Wasteland Chronicles
by Kunfyoozd
Summary: A collection of one-shots in no particular order.


The roar of the deathclaw was unmistakable. Death was coming for the unprepared. Theodore Graham prided himself on being prepared. With a dismissive blast of the raider's sawed-off into her own face, he cast the smoking weapon aside. He cared little for shotguns. Reverently, he drew his .44 magnums from the holsters under his duster. Both cylinders carried rounds specially designed to vacate a deathclaw's chest cavity with three. Twelve would suffice.

"I'm gonna assume you heard that." He glanced at his longtime partner and friend as she laid a raider flat with another raider and drove a power armored fist through both of them. He flicked his eyes toward Piper as she retched. Nora offered her a comforting pat on the back and a barely suppressed grin even as she kneecapped a raider that thought he had the element of surprise. His poorly chosen battlecry made it easy for her to accomplish without looking; though Graham knew she wouldn't have needed the tell. The woman's skill was uncanny. There was a wet crunching sound that made even Graham shudder as Veronica extracted her fist from what little remained of the unfortunate pair of raiders.

"Yeah." Her response came through the damaged speaker in her helmet. It crackled periodically and sometimes her voice sounded deeper; sometimes higher, but always with the characteristic rasp of a ghoul. Without another word, she fired her jump jets, punching and kicking hand- and footholds into the building to get to the roof. "I… see it. One hundred… yards."

"Horns?"

"You'll… see. Here it… comes." Sure enough, the deathclaw barreled through the carcass of a public transit bus, shrapnel and confettied upholstery framing it as it skidded to a halt at the end of the street. Graham judged about forty yards between them, took a breath as he pulled the hammers back. Four horns. Two on its head, two on its jaw. All four easily as long as Graham's leg. An Alpha.

"Oh, you're a big girl, ain'tcha?" Graham said as he leveled the barrels on the abomination. "Come to daddy." As if in response, the deathclaw set its murderous hands on the cracked pavement and belted out a warcry, it's maw full of teeth and scraps of its last meal. It scrabbled on the blood-slick street until it found purchase and charged. It covered the remaining forty yards in a breath. Graham let off four shots in the same span.

The first struck a horn and ricocheted off of two more before finding a home in the asphalt. The second and fourth went wide as the monstrosity veered left. The third shot struck home in its right palm, obliterating everything just shy of the elbow. The deathclaw bellowed its rage, clutching at the remains of its arm. Graham could see the blood already clotting at the stump. He leveled his barrels again and got two more shots off as he threw himself to the ground to avoid the car bumper spinning toward him. Before he could recover, he felt himself hauled up by the ankles and came face-to-upside-down-face with the Alpha. Graham leveled his barrels once more. Inhaled. Looked the creature in its bloodthirsty eye. Exhaled. Watched a rusted tire iron with a haphazardly fashioned axe blade haphazardly attached to it with equally rusted bolts bounce off a horn and embed itself in tough deathclaw flesh inches from his not-so-tough human flesh.

Graham slowly followed the trajectory, praying it was thrown by whom he hoped it was thrown. If it was Nora Holloway, Graham could accept the possibility of deliberately bouncing it off a horn to make the sharp angle to get it in the deathclaw's wrist. Anyone else, he would crucify for taking such a gamble with his person. His eyes found Nora beaming as if witness to a milestone in a protégé's training. His eyes found Piper, her own eyes wide in surprise and shock, arm frozen in front of her as if she'd just thrown something and didn't know what to do afterward.

"Wright! Do you have any idea what you would've hit if you'd missed? Me! You would've hit me! So help me-" His tirade was interrupted by the deathclaw discarding him much as he discarded the raider's sawed off. From his new position in the cockpit of what was once referred to as a "Zip", Graham watched the deathclaw remove the axe with a flick of a horn and a derisive snort, then bear all two tons of its hate down on the match-made-in-the-wasteland. Piper brought her .308 short-barrel combat rifle to panic-stricken bear. Nora eased the barrel back down and, ignoring the panic in Piper's eyes, took a deep breath. Graham held his own, wondering what sort of miracle she'd cooked up and hoping it was psychotic enough to work.

"VERONICA, PUNCH IT!" she bellowed. The deathclaw hunkered down briefly, sniffed the air, and with daunting, deliberate slowness, resumed its approach. Five feet. Graham estimated it was five feet from Nora and Piper when he heard jet engines fire a one second burn. It wasn't until she was almost upon it that he saw Veronica diMauro and adrenaline slowed time to a crawl as he processed Veronica's descent, fists clasped above her head; the deathclaw slowly, so slowly, turning its head up at her; Nora, terrifyingly common maniacal grin doing no favors to her badly scarred, surgically reassembled face; Piper, wide-eyed and slacked-jawed as the rifle started to slip from her hands. The instant Graham released his breath, Veronica's fists slammed into the sidewalk and Piper threw her arms up to keep the bits of bone and gray matter that used to be the deathclaw's head from her face. She was marginally successful. Nora, unsurprisingly, snatched one of the deathclaw's horns out the air as it sailed past her head, just within her reach. She held it up triumphantly and Graham dreaded the malevolence she would be able to fabricate with it.

"Consider it… punched." Veronica crackled as she stomped across the street to hoist Graham out of the infuriatingly small car. He dusted himself off after she set him down, straightened his tie and retrieved his revolvers.

"Thanks. Also, where the fuck were you?" Veronica responded with the closest thing to a shrug one could manage in power armor.

"I thought… you had it… under control." Graham paused. Despite the many years they'd worked together, Veronica had not often paid him a compliment. It made him uncomfortable.

"Oh. Uh, thanks." Veronica's helmet speaker protested as it did when she laughed. It was not a pleasant sound.

"I was... referring to… Nora." Graham sighed.

"Figures," he muttered as he turned to see Nora pick a chunk of deathclaw brain off her newest trophy. To her he said, "There's no question how you've survived the wasteland this long." He paused until she looked at him. "But, I wonder how long the wasteland will survive you." She struck a mockingly flattered pose; head tilting cheek into palm, elbow resting on the back of her opposite hand. She breathed a sigh.

"You say the sweetest things." Piper came to her side and spat a sizeable lump of brain onto the pavement. Very unladylike. Very Piper.

"Can't believe some people consider that a delicacy," she said with a grimace and a shot of saliva. Nora picked absently at the horn.

"It's an acquired taste." Piper stared at her. Graham stared at her. The angle of Veronica's helmet suggested she was staring at her.

"I don't think I'll ever know if you're being serious," Piper said flatly. Nora gazed down the curved length of the horn as if she were sighting a firearm. For all Graham knew, that's exactly what she had in mind.

"At least, you know I'll never be boring," she replied before pecking Piper on the cheek, not bothering to avoid the gore that remained. Graham cleared his throat.

"Let's just get out of here. I've had my fill of Concord. Can't even remember why we came here in the first place."

"In that case," Nora said, returning her axe to its home on her bandolier. She stooped down at the deathclaw's remains and rose with another horn in hand. "We came for this."

"Dare I ask why you need two of those?"

"I don't." Nora replied. Graham waited for her to elaborate. "One's for Dogmeat." With that, she turned and led the way back to the Red Rocket truck stop she had claimed as her own. Piper followed with a poorly suppressed grin, Veronica's helmet jarringly conveyed her laughter as she stomped away. Graham dragged a gloved hand down his face as he followed.

"I need a drink."


End file.
